


Daisy Chains

by enjcltaire



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: AU, F/F, Lonely Daisy, Love Letters, Pen Pals, Romantic Soulmates, Soft Hazel, sweethearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjcltaire/pseuds/enjcltaire
Summary: The lonely Daisy Wells writes a letter to a girl named Hazel in Hong Kong. Suddenly she isn't lonely anymore.
Relationships: Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	Daisy Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all! It's been a hot minute since I've posted anything but I still get notifications of comments and kudos and I still love this fandom so, SO much. I'M BACK. Here's a little story for you, I hope you love it. <3 mwah

It is the summer term at Deepdean, hot outside. The kind of day you spend sitting outside making daisy chains with your friends. Not me, though. I sit outside making daisy chains, of course. I just do it by myself. And I go back inside for afternoon lessons with daisies all in my hair, the stalks woven in my plaits just like they are growing out of my hair. I look like something that lived in a tree, I think with a laugh to myself, standing in front of the mirror in the dorm that evening and catching the daisies as they fall. I put them under my pillow. I think of the day, I think of the sun that sits low in the sky but hotter than ever, making the whole field golden, and I think of sitting at my desk when they tell us we are going to write to some girls from Hong Kong in the summer.

They hand us each a name and an address, written in a language I don’t recognise, and the name was Hazel. Hazel, I whisper to myself, barely a breath on my lips, as I lie in bed that night. Hazel. I never think much about it, not when I write to her that Sunday afternoon, telling her about myself. Not when I don’t know what to write because there is so little to say. Me, Daisy, Daisy Wells, with my messy blonde hair and my rosy cheeks and my bruised muddy knees from too many skids on the grass playing hockey in the rain. Daisy Wells, the quiet one who isn’t really so quiet, not around the right people, it is just that there were none of the right people here.

I never think about it when I prise the daisy chain apart and place half of it in the envelope, when I trace the Cantonese address with my fountain pen, or when I go to the post office drenched in the summer rain and suddenly it is on its way to the other side of the world.

It is when I go to use the phone, and I am handed an envelope smeared in red ink and shapes I don’t understand the meaning of, and the neatest handwriting I have ever seen that reads Daisy Wells in loops and swirls. I put down the phone, and I feel it in my hand, and it feels like magic already, before I have even opened it. And then I a back in the dorm room, and I peel it open gently.

To Miss Daisy Wells,  
Thank you for writing to me, I am so excited to hear from you. My name is Hazel Wong, I live in Hong Kong. Ever since I was young, I have dreamed about coming to England, to a school like yours. My father gave me books to read, ones with girls with blonde hair and rosy cheeks and hockey sticks and big smiles. I imagine that you look very pretty, much like that. My father told me that every English girl is the same, but I know that’s not true. I know that you are different. The other English girls, they do not put daisy chains in envelopes and send them to another country. They are on my mirror now, like the bunting you see at parties. I hope one day to meet you, to make daisy chains with you on the grass outside your school and put them in our hair so we look like nature things. Fairies, or something like that.

In Hong Kong, I am lonely. There are so few people like you and I, people who haven’t found the right people to sit with when they have their lunch, or to stay up with at night for a midnight feast. I know that girls do that here, but I am never invited. I have never met anyone who feels the way that I do. I have never been so sad to be so far away from someone that I barely know or understand, although I feel like we share something I have never shared with anyone.  
I will dream about meeting the Daisy Wells across many seas and lands, the Daisy Wells who will read my letter. I hope you are dreaming of it too, Daisy Wells. I hope you understand me as I understand you.  
Yours  
Hazel

I wipe a tear on the back of my hand, a tear I did not even notice falling, as my fingers find a photo inside the envelope. Hazel Wong¸ it reads, a photo of a girl with dark hair and smiling eyes, wearing a pretty green dress. Hazel. Hazel, millions of miles away. Hazel.

And so I write back with my address, and for the summer we write to each other each day, with photos and details and memories. For her birthday I send her a box of English chocolates with a note – for our midnight feast. She writes back, telling me she stayed up till midnight to write while she ate the chocolate, telling me her favourites, and how she wished I was there to celebrate with her.

In September things grow dark again as the trees change colours and the grass is too wet to sit on. On a cold evening I read a letter from Hazel.

My dear Daisy,  
I have such good news I can barely write. My father has allowed me to come to England after all my stories from you, and I will arrive at Deepdean in two weeks. My Daisy, I am so excited yet so afraid. I am going to see you in the flesh for the first time, and I can scarcely wait. I feel that you are half of me. I did not know love until I received your letter, Daisy Wells, and I don’t know what that really means, but I know I feel for you what I have never felt for anyone else. But oh, I am terrified to think you will not like me in reality. I am not pretty like you, Daisy, and my English is terrible. I am so afraid of what you will think of me. Please, remember our letters and the way I hope you feel. Do not let it fade away. Until then, Daisy Wells. I will see you soon.  
Yours  
Hazel

Right at that moment I think I am going to die. I drop the letter on my bed and immediately feel tears streaming down my face. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or dance, or all of them at once. Hazel. My Hazel, coming to Deepdean. In two weeks. Two weeks. I search for the date on the back of the envelope. 2nd of September. Two weeks. 16th of September. The date today is the 15th.

Tomorrow. Hazel is coming to Deepdean tomorrow.

In the morning I wake up early without my alarm clock, laying in bed looking at the ceiling wordlessly. Today. Hazel is coming today. Hazel, with her green dresses and her beautiful handwriting and her love of desserts and her wanting for a midnight feast. Today.

We file into breakfast; I can hardly eat. The half of the daisy chain is in my pocket; I clutch at it with shaking fingers, a reminder of her words. It makes me smile sadly to think she would ever believe I could not like her in person when I feel identically. Perhaps I am not the miracle she was looking for, the midnight feast partner, and the blonde English girl from her books. I am one of many, one of many girls who are so much more than I am. Perhaps I am nothing.

And then she is sitting in front of me in the classroom. Hazel, Hazel, with her beautiful eyes and smile and everything I have seen and imagined for months squeezed into a Deepdean uniform. And she sees me, and we lock eyes, and it is like magic, like nothing else in the world. “Hazel,” I whisper, the word barely leaving my lips. “Hazel.”

She stands up, and we are magnetised, and it is like the world has stopped moving around us. “Daisy,” she says, “Daisy. My Daisy.” She reaches out and clasps my hand in hers, and I hear the gasps and whispers from the girls around us, but I can’t bring myself to care. Not when she is here, and she is so beautiful. And she wraps me in a hug that feels like home, and I know that she is what I have been looking for.

“You are half of me,” she whispers. “Daisy and her daisy chains. Daisy,” she says with a laugh, reaching a hand into her pocket and pulling out the daisy chain I pressed into that envelope of my first letter.

“I love you,” I tell her then, gripping her close to me. “I love you, Hazel. I love you.”

And then she is pressing her lips to mine, and the world has gone silent, as if there is nothing else for miles. And she is here with me, and it is perfect. Hazel. Hazel.


End file.
